All the Dirt on Number 5
My Number Gossip website is becoming very popular. Recently the number of visits increased significantly. I decided to use my Google Analytics software to check the sources of this traffic.
The first spike in visits came after the link to my website appeared on the site PointlessSites.com. Never underestimate bad publicity.
But the real increase was due to the following description of my website at CollegeHumor.com:
Don’t even get me started on number 7! Number gossip. All the dirt on your favorite numbers, like 5.
The author of that quote is right. I did dig out some dirt on 5. Prime number 5 is secretly preparing to apply for a Nobel Prize in genetics. It is hiding its two twin brothers, 3 and 7, from the public eye, so that no one will notice that although 3 and 7 are twin brothers of 5, they are not twin brothers of each other. This situation is unique. While 5 has always been a member of two pairs of twin prime brothers, none of the tabloids has picked up on this.
And don’t even get me started on number 7! I haven’t put it on my website, but everyone knows that 7 is a cannibal, because seven eight nine.
After the link on CollegeHumor appeared, the number of visits jumped 20-fold. The dirt is as good as gold. Maybe I should rethink my approach and put more scandal into my website. Better yet, I should add sex to it. Actually, I already have sex on my website — as part of the word “sextuple”.
No, I won’t cheapen my numbers just for publicity. I will not add numerical sex positions 69, 71, and 88 to my website. If you’re interested in those, check out the cartoon above, which is the work of the famous geek Randall Munroe in his xkcd comic. But he’s such a true geek that he doesn’t really know what 71 is and probably never heard of 88. (Feel free to call me, Randall.)
My website is about math. I admit that I have sprinkled a few entries on my site that might be considered non-mathematical, but those are my guilty pleasures. Numerical sex positions, however, are not one of them.
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I’m surprised that you added that comic to your blog. Actually, it’s one of the things that I think is going wrong with Randall’s comic these days — and who am I to judge, considering that my own comic gets compared to his. His subtitle states his comic is about romance as much as (or more than, giving the order of the list) math and language, but more and more, it’s pre-occupied with sex (and not even romance) and “dirty” stuff.
Nothing wrong with that in itself, but that leaves fewer things that I can link to or pass around the classroom. And I can’t have a link on my school blog for fear that a parent will pick the wrong day to click on it.
Glad to hear that you’re getting more hits. I recently started an upswing in my numbers as well.
27 January 2009, 11:15 ammisha:
I have a catchy name for a collection of comics like this: A Course of Dirty Mathematics.
27 March 2009, 1:06 amMaria Droujkova:
What would be nice if people could submit their own number gossip. Then it would be a “Math 2.0” game, drawing people into contributing content.
I think it’s pretty easy to program. Can I play with it?
23 August 2009, 5:36 pm